Ornament - Whale
Materials - Purchased on sale from Land of Nod
Read Jonah 1:1-4:11
(Paraklesis to the Most Holy Mother of God, Ode VI, Eighth Tone)
Entreaty do I pour forth unto the Lord, and to Him do I proclaim all my sorrows, for many woes fill my
soul to repletion, and lo, my life unto hades has now drawn nigh. Like Jonah do I pray to Thee. Raise
me up from corruption, O Lord, my God.
From the Prologue from Ohrid, by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich, September 22
Jonah lived more than eight hundred years before Christ. It is said that he was that son of the widow of
Zarephath in Sidon whom the Prophet Elias had raised from the dead. By his three-day sojourn in the
belly of the whale, he prefigured the three days that Christ lay in the tomb; and, by his deliverance from
the belly of the whale, he prefigured the Lord's Resurrection from the dead. Everything else concerning
this wonderful prophet can be read in the Book of Jonah.
-St. Basil the Great, Homily on Thanksgiving
Whether they stand amid flames, as did the three Youths in Babylon, who were united with God
(Daniel 3:21), or are shut up with lions (Daniel 6:16-23), or swallowed by a whale (Jonah 2:1), we
should call them blessed, and they should pass their lives in joy, not being distressed over present
sufferings, but rejoicing in the hope of what is in store for us in the next life.
-A Homily by St. John Chrysostom
In this instance, Jonah was the precursor who trained our minds. For, just as the sea monster vomited
him forth after three days, not finding him to be suitable fare (for the nature of sin is the proper and
suitable sustenance of death—from sin is it born, from sin does it take root, by sin is it nourished); and
just, as in our case, when we swallow a stone without realizing it, and at first the action of the stomach
attempts to digest it, but, finding this sustenance to be alien to it, consults further with the digestive
faculty and does not decompose the stone, but destroys its strength (hence, it cannot hold down its
previous sustenance, but, in exhaustion, it vomits it up together with the stone in great pain); so, also, in
the case of death: it swallowed the Cornerstone and was unable to digest it, since all of its strength was
sapped; for this reason, together with this Stone it threw up the rest of the food that it had inside it,
when it vomited forth human nature, which, in the end, it could not hold down. This is why the barren
women [of the Old Testament] were precursors, that the birthgiving [of the Virgin] might be confirmed
—or, rather, not only that this birthgiving might be confirmed, but more; for, if we examine the matter
with precision, we shall find that barrenness is a figure of death itself.
See also Law of God, Sacred History Chapter 37, The Prophets,
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/law_of_god_slobodskoy_1.htm#_Toc36163705
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